You had me at hello? Well, Sorella, the unassuming Lower East Side Italian sharing plates restaurant had me at pate de fegato. Specifically a duck fat English muffin topped with chicken liver mousse, a fried egg and pancetta: gluttinous goodness incarnate. The dish was on the menu when chef Emma Hearst and general manager Sarah Krathen first threw open the doors at 95 Allen back in 2008, and it, among a plethora of other singularly scrumptious dishes, kept me coming back. Called Sorella (sister in Italian) because of the women’s close friendship, the menu plucks inspiration a plenty from their travels in Italy and relies heavily on locally sourced ingredients. Now many of those recipes (including that aforementioned heart-stopping pate di fegato) are collected into Hearst and Krathen’s first book, simply titled Sorella (Olive Press), which besides giving you the how-to for food and cocktails, also tells the story of the women’s success (and includes plenty of glamour shots of the gorgeous pair). But the best takeaway from the book are the recipes themselves, many of them thoughtful takes on Italian classics like baccala mantecato with canataloupe and chiles or stuffed meatballs with caramelized onions and arugula. And it should be picked up for the pasta chapter alone, which is full of homemade recipes worth the extra kitchen effort: chestnut stracci, pici, tajarin, and agnolotti dal plin, among them. FIORELLA V.
